Maw's paintings are drenched with a sense of desire, beauty and power. The virile, beautiful people she depicts are stylised, distorted and charged with meaning. Unsettling in their content, these are paintings that exude a potent sexuality. Maw's output has been modest in numbers, if not scale; painstakingly painted over several months, each of her full figure portraits is almost life-size. Her sleek paintwork resembles air brushing in its precision, offering a surrealism somewhere between Salvador Dali and the kind of hot-rod paintings which stretch across panel vans. From Telecom Prospect 2004: New Art New Zealand (Emma Bugden) This remarkable book treats the surface of the page like the surface of a painting. Liz Maw's otherworldly figures hover over the voids within, and reveal her startling attention to surface detail. It's a sumptuous example of her written and visual imagination. Natasha Conland, Auckland City Art Gallery.

?